Now, watch TV on your mobile phone

The service will enable users to view as many as four channels on their cell phones, reports Satyen Mohapatra.

Watching latest news or your favourite sports event on a mobile phone in the Capital may be possible soon. Doordarshan plans to start this hi-tech service in the next few months.

According to Prasar Bharati chief engineer MC Aggarwal, Doordashan will start DVBH (Digital Video Broadcasting to Hand-held devices, like mobile phones) service in Delhi by March 2007.

Talking to the Hindustan Times, Aggaral said, "The present mobiles will not work. It has to be a DVBH compatible mobile which costs between Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000. Primarily it has a bigger screen to be able to give greater clarity on the mobile's LCD screen."

The TV services to hand-held devices are already running in Korea, Japan and USA.

Experiments for DVBH have been already been conducted in the Capital and now tenders have alsobeen invited, he added.

What we are proposing is to have four channels to be transmitted on DVBH from the existing channels being transmitted on Digital Terrestrial Transmission.

However, it has not yet been decided which channels will be eventually be transmitted, he added.

At present the digital transmission is being done only from the four digital transmitters we have in the four metros, namely Mumbai, Kolkatta, Delhi and Chennai, he added.

The quality of digital transmission is a quantum jump ahead of the analog. And the added advantage is that on one frequency we are capable of transmitting five channels, leading to the saving of power and manpower cost.

By the end of the Eleventh Plan we plan to become 60 per cent digital as far as all our transmission is concerned, he added.